With 13 billions of passengers per year, the Japan’s railway network is famous for its punctuality and for the stations overcrowding. As everybody should know, the public transportation punctuality is not just a question of planning, vehicles or infrastructure. Often the bad passengers and other vehicle behaviours can cause a strong efficiency decrease.

The behavioural approach of the nudge theory says that the use of some indirect suggestions or reinforcements can change the human behaviour. For example there are the floor stickers for regulating people flows in crowd stations that improved their capacity. Or the “buy now” call to action that we find in the sponsored post on the social networks. I must say that the difference between advertising and behavioural psychology is really thin, but the thing that I liked most about Japan’s nudge strategies is the human approach. They indeed are trying more to take care of the passengers mood than modifying it.

I found ingenious the substitution of the emergency-like sound alert when the train is leaving with a melody composed for reducing the passenger stress and giving a sort of train leaving timing. These melodies had the effect to calm down the passengers reducing the overcrowding and decreasing the last second jumps that cause doors problems and delates. Following the video with all the melodies that obviously have a really strong manga approach.

The other nudge strategy that at first seems banal is regarding the suicides containment using some led lights installed at the ends of the platforms. According some studies the blue color has a calming effect, but what seems just a neuro-marketing concept, in that country had incredible results. Japan has the highest suicide rate of the world’s most advanced country and the blue led light installation decreased this rate of the 84%.

Concluding I think that the nudge theory in Italy could be used, but adapting it to our particular approach to transportation and public spaces. I found really interesting that some stickers or sound alerts could improve the transportation efficiency with a really low investment.
This will surely change the way I’ll work in the future.

Google has started its self-driving project in 2009 and in 2016 it funded a completely new company called Waymo. Google today is one of the first company that put on the road level 4 autonomous vehicles and that says to have driven 3.5 million of autonomous kilometers in public roads.

In the autonomous vehicles arena there are many other interesting competitors like Bosch, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla and Navya that opened the orders for its Autonom Cab. We can’t even forget all the other traditional automakers like Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda and Daimler that are working on autonomous cars as the only future possible for their business. So, even if the competition is really high, for me Google will dominate self-driving market like it is dominating Internet but let me explain how starting from a schematisation of what Google did for the web.

As you can see Google created an ecosystem based on technologies, services, contents and advertising more or less​ in the same ​way it is​ doing with its mobility company Waymo. Waymo indeed created its own technology that is supposed to be designed “just” to drive autonomously around the city like Gmail was designed just for sending emails, Google Search just for indexing the web and YouTube just for sharing videos.

Waymo has a proprietary combination of self-driving hardware and software that besides going alone around the city, I’m sure that will distribute personalized and localized advertising for passengers and pedestrians installing external displays. In the near future Google will sell targetized advertising aggregating data from our Android account, our web/video history, our interests, our purchases and lastly our daily commuting and the places we live!

“The detail we capture with our custom LiDAR is so high that not only can we detect pedestrians all around us, but we can tell which direction they’re facing.”

This means that Waymo’s cars can count the “views” exactly like AdWords, AdSense and Google Analytics do on the web.From the advertisers point of view this targeting option is absolutely incredible and it opens to the most effective and distributed local/real-time marketing​ of the digital era but is not enough. The neutrality of the Waymo’s platform means that all the traditional automakers will have the opportunity to deploy the bigG self-driving technology paying for the full package, or paying a fee and letting Google use their data and their space for advertising. If this sounds disturbing, well, if you used at least one Google product Android included, you are already in the system!

What could be defined the Google’s Digital business model will give to Waymo two solid revenue sources that will make affordable and viral its technology like happened with Android, AdSense, Adword, Analytics, Maps, Office Suites, Webmasters Tools, Wallet and yes, even YouTube.

The Waymo’s integration with other Google services will be amazing and will make taking a ride as easy as searching for a website or zooming a map. Privacy will have to be taken really seriously but we all see in the future how the market winner will manage this issue.

In the meanwhile I’ll continue to read and design, so if you liked this post, share it and come back on my site.

Intead of Bots, in these months I used many times a lot of Chat Customer Services on some companies web sites and on Messenger. As all the studies say, communicating with a company through our favourite instant messaging app is smarter than downloading any branded app or using the old-fashioned email. My experience was great and these companies increased loyalty and my admiration.

Using Whatsapp, Messenger, Telgram or WeChat for companies is a great challenge for many technical and communicational factors:

Technical, because CRMs should access to IM platforms for identifying users and managing the requests trafic.

Communicational, because some contents should be always and easily available for customers instead of lose in the chat’s flow.

As a Product Manager I focused on the second problem and, starting from a Whatsapp-like layout, I designed the “Featured contents” function. The scope of this function is to enrich the discussion between the customer and the company saving the requested contents in a reserved area of the app.
Watch the “Featured contents” gif animation for understanding how it function in the direct relationship between a Hotel and its customer.

In the last months automotive world is talking a lot about autonomous and self-driving vehicles both for private and public transportation. During my day researches one day I found the exciting call for collaboration for Olli, the self-driving vehicle produced by Local Motors.

Designing the autonomous bus user experience is a complex task: for first because self-driving buses will serve the traditional public transportation diversified and multi-age target; second because without the driver and, in some cases, without a fixed route, passengers will have some new functional and informational needs.

The first part of my project started with a Service Design session focused on what kind of transportation services a self-driving bus can serve.

Personal on-demand shuttle

It’s like a Taxi/Uber, but less exclusive and more spacious. It brings one or more people from A to B. It can be reserved days in advance and can make various stops during a single dedicated service. The served area is restricted.

Shared on-demand shuttle

It’s like public transport service except for the fact that passengers can add a personalized stop to the route within the bus pertaining area. The route is dynamically optimized depending on users destinations and pick-up calls. The high level of complexity makes this service ideal for closed areas like small districts, big companies, entertainment parks etc.

Public Transport

It’s exactly the same public transport service as we know it.

Delivery service

It’s like sending objects using a shipping company, but instead of giving the package to a human, users will schedule the shipment using an app or a dedicated device in the bus, and then they store the package in a secured housing inside the vehicle. The recipient will track the shipment in real-time and will be alerted when the bus is at the delivery point (or in front of his door). This service can be added to the “Shared on-demand shuttle” one, or it can be configured as an automated delivery service with customized buses and dedicated physical hubs.
This delivery service model is useful for companies that need to transport small parts within a relatively big space, or in modern cities creating a sort of fully automated shipping/delivery hubs for connecting wholesale shops and retails stores.
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After this first Service Design session, I started a User Centered Analysis focused on the self-driving bus passengers needs. For designing a real accessible service, I defined only “analogue” needs excluding all the information/functions that a smartphone app could have. What you read is what my grandmother or a manager with a dead smartphone could need for using an autonomous bus.

What self-driving bus passengers need outside the bus

– Passengers need a purchase and reservation system that should be both digital (app), physical (street’s stops signs) and gestural (raising the hand for asking to catch the bus).

Users don’t want conversations. Users want pertinent and timely contents within the app that they use most.

Chatbots have the reason to exist because users don’t like to download lot of apps and because mobile sites are slow or difficult to navigate.

Chatbots are a communication channel with an interaction pattern in a sort of way similar to the natural language. They aren’t virtual sales agents.

Chatbots have the difficult mission to bring together contents and services within messaging apps.

The best chatbots performances aren’t based on conversations. Interacting with them requires new functions and a standardized command language.

So I can say that Chatbots are an important technology because:

they represent a way for engaging users within their favorite apps

they can replace apps and websites for simple and recurrent tasks

they are the only direct marketing channel comparable with the email

they revolutionize the smartphone’s push communication marketing

they are the entrance point for advanced data building programs

users interest in downloading branded apps is decreasing

mobile navigation sometimes is frustrating

users are accustomed in making Google searches in a conversational way

But this importance bring with it some threats:

chatbots can’t really understand natural language

chatbots can’t replace the all the other apps functions

chatbots could decrease the users curiosity and research capacity

chatbots will struggle for visibility

chatbots can’t wrong a lot of answers and they can’t ask too much questions

chatbots must care a lot about language, style, frequency and relevancy of their push contents

chatbots aren’t a branded channel

Chatbots are the future of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Direct Marketing for the following reasons:

because they deliver profiled offers and contents, receiving immediate feedbacks

because they are an effective support for the human-based customer care

because they will build accurate customers profiles analyzing the interactions and asking for information, ratings etc

Thinking about all these incredible opportunities, I examined the standard instant messaging apps user experience and I realized that Chatbots should have a dedicated set of functions that designed as following.

At this point I tried to go practical matching my Chatbots functions and experience with some generalistic companies.

So please, stop dreaming about a J.A.R.V.I.S.-like Bot. AI will never be like a personal assistant that knows everything about you, that understands the environment, your feelings and your needs. AI assistant will be for ever a digital system that gives complex and nice outputs just because someone coded all kind of linguistic inputs that a human can produce; this kind of assistant will never really understand what’s happening. The most advanced AI possible is the one that has the biggest relational and semantic database tested (manually!) by real operators (read “The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots” by Ellen Huet).

Natural language isn’t the key

Machines that understand some plain language commands and that can anticipate some users needs are possible, but computers that are able to understand all kind of phrases that a human pronounces, sorry, but aren’t near to come.

Like everybody us today can understand icons on expensive glass-plates called smartphone, in the same way we must create a simplified language for communicating and using Bots.

For me nobody wants to lose his time talking with a Bot even if companies would love the idea that millions of virtual and assertive sales people talk 24h/7 with customers. Instead, the most amazing feature of the Bots AI isn’t their humanity, but the fact that users can treat them without any courtesy, that they will memorize users tastes and credentials, that they will anticipate users needs thanks to some “natural language” commands and some Facebook profile analysis.

All this doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t care about language per se, but that they should drive users to use a simplified language for the following reasons:

a simple language is easier to explain in a sort of tutorial during the first chats

a simple language is faster and more efficient than the natural one. If the number of taps for receiving an information on a chat is a way more than searching it on a website, the chatbot is going to fail

creating a sort of standard simplified language for all the Bots will ease exponentially their usage.

The users fruition model will be like the one that today drives sites like Yahoo Answers, Quora or the common FAQs pages where contents are organized and required using the “How to…” and “What is…” format.

Conclusion

During the last years I developed a strange professional syndrome.
Everytime I use an object I analyze usability and functions trying to learn or imaging improvements. Today the interaction between humans and machines is powered by all kind of sensors that can interpret imput like natural voice commands, objects movements, touch and hand free, etc.

Today I want to introduce you my concept for an in-ear headphones touch gestures. As you can see in the following gifs, I imagined to turn the headphones cables in a control device dedicated to the four most common commands used during the music listening: volume up, volume down, next song and last song.

For designing the in-ear headphones touch gestures I was inspired by the “traditional” touch pattern gestures and by the emerging smart clothing technology. I admit even that sometimes during my trainings or in a crowded metro I’d appreciated these gestures because I didn’t have how to switch that shitty song that everyone have on its library.

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Antonio Patti

I'm an happy husband, a digital professional since 2006 and a capoerist divided between Italy and Brazil.
I work as Digital Product Manager and Digital Strategist at the Transport Company of Milan.
Here I write in English and Italian about Digital Communication, Product Design, Automotive, Transportation and User Experience.